Utility vehicles typically are required to be provided with a number of storage cabinets accessible from the exterior of the vehicle. Such cabinets typically include a single chamber or storage compartment having its walls fabricated by attaching sheet metal to a suitable framework or by molding a suitable plastic material to form the walls as a one piece or integral unit.
Sheet metal cabinets are recognized as being undesirable from the standpoint of their cost of construction and their susceptibility to damage and corrosion. On the other hand, problems are encountered with molded plastic cabinets in regard to warpage and the requirement that their walls be reinforced subsequent to the molding operation when intended for heavy duty use environments. A further problem encountered with molded plastic cabinets is that a separate mold must be constructed each time it is desired to construct a cabinet of a different size or shape.
Moreover, prior cabinet construction techniques of which I am aware do not allow for the construction of modules including two or more cabinets which may be constructed separately from a vehicle and then installed thereon, and further allow individual cabinets damaged during use to be subsequently removed from their module and replaced without requiring removal of the whole of their module from the vehicle.
As a result of the disadvantages of prior cabinet constructions, utility vehicles requiring the provision of numerous cabinets of differing size and/or configuration, such as with the case of fire trucks, are quite expensive to manufacture and maintain when damaged during use.